Thursday, January 17, 2013

Deck Review: The Universal Fantasy Tarot

The Universal Fantasy Tarot

I received this Lo
Scarabeo deck as a Yule gift several years ago and couldn’t wait to get home to try it out. As an
unrepentant Dungeons and Dragons player—I started playing when I was 10 and
still play to this day—I had high expectations for this deck, that it
would be something different.

Turns out that I wasn’t
disappointed. The artwork on the cards is gorgeous. Even if you bought this
deck just for the images and weren’t planning to use it for divination, I found
the pictures on each card fascinating and unique. It is unlike any other deck I
have seen before. I
did find, however, that the images had an edge to them. This deck is darker
than many of the decks I normally use, and as such could work well for someone
who is exploring that side of themselves.

Many of the cards do look
alike at first glance but Lo Scarabeo has made it easier to identify what is
what with their numbering system. At the top center of each card, a yellow
Roman numeral (for the Major Arcana) or Arabic number (for the pips) is clearly
visible. However, there is no designation for the Court cards. In addition,
like almost all of Lo Scarabeo’s offerings, the titles of each card is given in
many languages; in this case, the titles are in English, Spanish, Italian,
French at the top, and German and Dutch at the bottom. I’m a big fan of
multi-lingual decks.

The Rider-Waite imagery is
present, at least partially, on many of the cards. The 9 of Cups, for example,
shows a table set in a forest with eight of the nine Cups suspended in the
trees with lit candles in them. The ninth lit candle sits in a Cup on the table
itself. A lizard (dinosaur?) dressed in what appears to be Renaissance garb is
standing before the table. So the image of pleasure is there with the table,
but if you’re expecting the lizard to be smiling with satisfaction…well, let’s
put it this way: He MAY be smiling but it’s not obvious. And Smokey the Bear is
definitely NOT smiling; doesn’t that lizard know he can start a fire with
candles in the trees? :)

The 8 of Pentacles card
shows a man at the bottom of a tree spiraling upward into a starry sky. He
looks upward, and to his right is a ladder sitting against the tree next to his
toolbox. The pride in work image of the cards is clearly here, and evidently he
does need to pay attention to the details to get all the way up to the top for
that last pentacle. Incidentally, the suit is called Pentacles but in this deck
they are more like golden disks with blue centers. The only true pentacle I saw
in the deck was that on the Magician, but I may have missed others.

The Devil card is very
interesting. In the background looms a large purple winged monster that looks
like something like Frodo and company faced under the mountain. In the foreground
are not two chained people, but two chained stone cat statues. If the cats are
actually alive—and given the nature of this deck, anything is possible—there is
no room for them to slip out of the chains. I think this is probably the first
devil card that I have seen that has a cat on it. The image was chilling until
I got to the cats; no offense to felines intended, but it lost its punch right
then and there. The fact that the cats appear to be standing stock still and
unconcerned about their situation just took something away for me.

My favorite card on this
deck was Justice. This card is truly stunning. Lady Justice has an interesting
sword in her right hand; the magenta handle is almost is long as the blade
itself. The scales in her left hand are truly original and she holds them
almost delicately; they hang down almost the entire length of her torso and
truly must be seen to be believed. Like many modern images of Justice, she has
her breasts bared (Author’s note: There is some female skin to be seen in this
deck but very little male nudity. My apologies, ladies!) but wears a long
flowing blue dress. She is not blindfolded but has her head turned
dispassionately to the left, looking at the scales.

The bottom line is that you really do have to know what you’re getting
into with this deck. Because of the fantastical nature of the images, those who
prefer something more conventional are not going to like it at all. But if
you’re into fantasy or sci-fi, and have progressed in your studies of the tarot
to the point where the card images do not need to be totally traditional, then
you will be very pleased.

1 comment:

I had a dream the day I saw this deck online like they give you a code and there's this elevator like in Harry Potter you put your code in the buttons then wala different dimension, that dream definitely was something, I want to know if the thoth or Marseilles system is also afflicted on this deck, are they're faeries in this deck?